


Good to Have You Back

by Sineala



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Angst, Artificial Intelligence, Avengers Vol. 8 (2018), Community: cap_ironman, Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-21 05:36:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17037641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala/pseuds/Sineala
Summary: When business calls him away from Avengers Mountain, Tony leaves his AI at home to keep Steve company. And when the two of them are called into battle, Steve needs all the help he can get against a foe he never wanted to face again.





	Good to Have You Back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> I have combined several of the requested prompts, including cuddling in front of a fire, Steve comparing Tony and AI Tony, and Tony and his AI helping Steve deal with the aftermath of Secret Empire. Happy holidays!
> 
> Thanks to Sheron for beta!

It doesn't _quite_ make up for living at the North Pole, inside the corpse of a dead Celestial, but Steve has to admit that the fireplace is a nice touch.

He wouldn't have asked for it himself -- and he didn't, in fact, ask for anything when T'Challa's people wanted to know if he had any particular interior design requests for Avengers Mountain -- but everyone who knows Tony knows that Tony's a bit of a hedonist, and one of the perks of being in a relationship with him is that Steve just gets to relax and enjoy it, with only the slightest edge of guilt.

So here he is, in the quarters he shares with Tony, stretched out on a couch in front of Tony's very own personal roaring fire. The couch is long, but so is Steve. Tony is lying on top of him, their legs tangled together, his head on Steve's chest. He's still wearing most of a business suit -- he didn't even get his tie off before crawling into Steve's arms -- and his eyes are almost all the way closed. He looks exhausted.

It figures. Stark Unlimited is taking up a heck of a lot of Tony's time these days. Steve watches the firelight play over Tony's face and he wonders, the way he's always wondered, how Tony ever manages any of it. Back when Steve was moonlighting as a commercial artist, he fell asleep over the drawing board night after night, and even then he was still late with the sketches. And he was only a part-timer. Tony, on the other hand, is a full-time Avenger and a full-time CEO. He's running two lives at once, and he's been doing it for as long as Steve has known him.

Tony's eyes flicker open, the merest glimpse of blue. He's noticed Steve looking at him, then.

"Mmm," Tony mumbles. "M'awake, really."

Steve smiles and pushes the hair back from Tony's temple, where it's nearly falling into his eyes. "It's all right," he murmurs. "You don't have to be. I know it's been a long week. I know you're tired."

"You're telling me," Tony says. The words are muffled against Steve's chest. And then he pushes himself up, opens his eyes a little wider, like he's wringing the very last dregs of alertness from himself. "Oh, that reminds me," he says. "I have to be in New York again tomorrow."

Steve suppresses the sigh that wants to come out of him. Not another business trip. Not another-- wait. How's that going to work?

"Didn't you just tell T'Challa you were going to give the Quinjets a tune-up tomorrow?"

Tony's eyes are sliding shut again. "Yeah," he breathes, sleepily. "Don't worry. I've got a plan. I've got it all worked out."

"Oh?"

Sure, Steve knows Tony's a genius. But even Tony can't be in two places at once.

He waits for the answer. Tony starts snoring.

Yeah, so much for that. Steve smiles down at him.

Whatever it is, Tony will let him know soon.

* * *

At about eleven in the morning, Steve walks into the hangar and smiles to see Iron Man already hard at work underneath one of the Quinjets. None of the rest of the team is here, but Tony never takes a day off, does he? Steve's not sure how Tony got back so quickly when he'd left for New York at seven, but he obviously made it after all. He's keeping his schedule packed, just like he said he was.

Anyone else would be using some kind of mechanic's creeper, but Tony, of course, is suited up in one of his old, old armor models. There are casters all along it, and he's pushing himself to and fro with delicate little taps of his repulsors. Steve's seen Tony do this before, and he's always been secretly -- or not-so-secretly -- charmed.

"Hey, Shellhead," Steve calls out. "I thought you'd still be in New York for sure! How's it going?"

He bends down, but even so he can't quite see Tony's face from this vantage point; Tony's too far under the jet.

He is rewarded with another burst of repulsors, a golden glow as Tony guides himself slowly out, pushing himself toward Steve now. When he can finally see Tony, it's not quite what he was expecting. Tony is fully suited up, helmet and everything, right down to the glow of the eyeslits -- which is a little strange, because all his memories of Tony in this model of armor are of him being able to see Tony's eyes, the one part of Iron Man he'd ever been able to see. He used to spend hours daydreaming about what the rest of Iron Man looked like, only to find out that he'd already known.

Tony pushes himself all the way out, clear of the Quinjet's wing, and he sits up, palms splayed on the floor. He looks a little funny with the casters still sticking out of his back.

"Fine," Tony says. He sounds a little off. Distracted, maybe? "Fine, but didn't anyone-- didn't he tell you I was going to be here?"

Huh?

"What do you mean?" Steve asks. "Didn't who tell me what? You told me last night you were going to New York today."

Tony's shoulders heave as he shrugs in the armor, as his head tilts down; it's a little hard to read him with the helmet on but the whole effect is one of helpless frustration. "Yeah, but he-- but I--" He sighs. "Here."

And then Tony jams two gauntleted fingers into the helmet release, he flips the faceplate back, and his meaning is readily apparent.

It's not Tony.

Or rather, it is, but--

It's Tony's artificial intelligence. His face is Tony's, perfect down to the last detail, but he's translucent blue light rather than flesh and bone. Steve can see all the way through him, to the curved metal of the back side of the helmet, which is more than a little eerie. 

The AI looks up at Steve and smiles a smile that's almost guilty, like he's been caught doing something he shouldn't. Steve's seen that exact look on Tony's face before, usually when Steve has found him in the workshop when he's supposed to be sleeping. He marvels at Tony's ability to code in his own facial expressions right down to the way the corner of his mouth twitches.

"Hi, Steve," Tony's AI says, cheerfully. He's glowing. He's literally glowing. Light reflects from his armor.

Steve just stares.

He's met Tony's AI before, of course. After-- after everything, after he'd finally come back to himself and defeated his nightmarish Hydra double, Tony's AI had been there on the battlefield. Tony's AI had, in fact, been the first to speak to him as he'd stood there with his fallen Hydra self at his feet. _It's good to have you back, Cap_ , Tony's AI had said.

Tony had still been in a coma, but Tony's AI had been running the company in his absence. He'd embarked on a sizable PR campaign to tell the country that Captain America was back, the real Captain America. It was what Tony would have done, because, in a very real sense, he was Tony.

And then Tony had come back, and Steve had figured that the AI had been gracefully retired. He hadn't asked. He'd been too busy reconnecting with Tony. He'd assumed the AI had been turned off. Shoved in a closet somewhere.

But apparently not.

It makes sense, Steve supposes. Now Tony can really be in two places at once.

"Hi," Steve returns cautiously. "I... I guess he did go to New York today, then."

"Yep," Tony's AI says. "We would have flipped a coin for it, but he had to go schmooze and I can't wear a suit that's not, well. This." He extends his gauntleted hand and turns it over, like there's something under it that's not empty air. "It tends to put off the investors." He grins.

The suit itself seems real enough. If Steve reached out he could touch it, could brace his hand on the metal of Tony's shoulder the way he always does. But the man underneath is insubstantial. A ghost, but not exactly.

Steve smiles. He likes the joke. Trust Tony to give his AI his very own sense of humor. It-- well, it reminds him of Tony.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" Steve asks. "Do you need any help?"

Tony's virtual brow scrunches up. "With the Quinjets?"

"Yeah, with the Quinjets." Steve tries to think of a way of putting it that won't offend him. "I mean, if you're not-- if you don't have a real body-- maybe if there's something you can't do, the way you are?"

"Oh." His mouth rounds, a curvature of blue light. "No, I'm fine. I can do everything he does. Well, everything relevant. There's enough dexterity in the gauntlets that I can do everything I need. Thank you, though. That's sweet."

_Sweet_ , he says. Like Tony would have said it. Like Tony does say it. Tony calls him sweet a lot.

He misses Tony.

It's deeply strange to miss Tony when Tony's right here.

"Okay," Steve says. He heads to the chair next to the desk that's up against the wall, where one of the Avengers' communal computer terminals is sitting. He logs himself in with a few keystrokes and brings up the most recent batch of team reports. "Well, how about I stay here with you and we can both get some work done?"

Tony blinks at him -- blue eyes in a blue, blue face, like some kind of ghostly Kree -- and tilts his head, squinting, like he can't figure out why on Earth Steve would want to. If he has Tony's memories, he should know this.

Steve can't just say _I miss my boyfriend_.

"Sure," Tony's AI says, finally, bewildered. "Whatever makes you happy."

* * *

It turns out that sitting with Tony's AI is... surprisingly nice. _Nice_ might be a low-key way to put it, but he feels... like Tony makes him feel. Pleasant. Peaceful. Like it's okay to relax, like he isn't going to be asked for Captain America's official opinion. Like he can just be himself. 

He can talk like Tony can, keeping a conversation flowing like he's juggling blindfolded, a skill that Steve knows takes an awful lot of work sometimes, but he makes it look easy. He makes everything look easy. It reminds Steve of other days he's spent with Tony, just chatting away. It isn't like really having Tony, of course, but it's the next best thing.

"Well," Tony says, and he slides out from under the Quinjet and claps his hands together ostentatiously. "Looks like everything's just about--"

The lights overhead flash red and a klaxon whoops.

"Uh-oh," Tony's AI says.

Steve waits for his identicard to light up, for T'Challa to call the Avengers together.

Nothing happens.

The lights are still flashing.

Steve remembers that everyone else took the day off. It's just him and Tony's AI, holding down the fort. Something must have tripped the automated alarm.

Well, it's not like he can't lead a team. It'll just be a very small team.

He stands up, unslings his shield, and frowns at Tony's AI. "You can still fight, right? I mean, if you're-- if you're--"

He doesn't really know how to ask the question, even.

Tony's AI smiles that feral combat-ready smile Steve's seen on Tony's face for a decade. It looks a little different when it's see-through, but not by much. "If I'm incorporeal?" He nods. "Yeah, sure. The suit still works fine." He tips his palm outwards in illustration; a repulsor glows bright.

"Good." Steve breathes out, relieved. He turns, bends down, pulls the nearby laptop to himself again, switching off the lights and klaxon and starting to bring up the sensor network to see what's gotten the Mountain in such a state. "Let's just see what we're dealing with here, huh?"

The AI steps closer, taps him on the shoulder. If Steve hadn't known the difference, he would have thought it was real.

"Hang on," the AI says. "I can do that faster than you can."

Tony's AI is, literally, a computer. Of course he can interface with networks. Steve remembers, once, that he used to resent Extremis. That probably explains why the AI looks a little pained, like he doesn't want to draw attention to it.

It's hard to hold being a computer against the version of Tony standing in front of him. He's an Avenger and he can fight like one. Right now, that's the only thing that's relevant.

"Be my guest," Steve tells him.

And then Tony's AI just looks more and more pained. "It's-- oh, no." If he were human he would have paled, but his eyes are wider. "I can do it myself. You can just stay here, really."

Like hell. He's not going to stay here. "What's that supposed to mean?" Steve asks. "Of course I'm going with you."

"It's a Hydra base," the AI says, grimly. "Not too far away from here, actually. Hidden under the ice."

Steve's stomach twists and his throat tightens. He remembers when Hydra used to be-- well, if not quite absurd, then certainly some of the least fearsome of the Avengers' repeat villains. Terrible uniforms. Incompetent leadership.

He'd certainly turned all that around, hadn't he?

He wants the past back, the way it was before. He doesn't want to think of his other self, a nightmare in gilt-edged green, Supreme Leader of an unstoppable and terrifying force. But he doesn't get a choice. This is reality, and he's living it, and it's his job to make the world safer. That's what makes him different from that monster. He has to take Hydra down.

"No," Steve says, hoarsely. "No, I'll go. I've got this."

The AI eyes him like he's pretty sure Steve is lying -- another perfectly-replicated Tony Stark expression -- then he turns around and slams the ramp button on the Quinjet.

He can do this, he tells himself. He has to be able to do this.

* * *

Even with his cold-weather gear on, he's shivering, shaking like a leaf as the Quinjet touches down on the nearly-featureless plain of snow that is the Avengers' new home now. And also Hydra's home, apparently. He doesn't hate the cold as much as everyone thinks he does. That's not why he's shaking. He just-- doesn't know how to face this.

Tony's AI flew them over, at the controls without Steve needing to ask. The AI hadn't even had to put his hands on the controls, either. Another benefit, Steve supposes, of being an artificial intelligence.

Steve gets himself out of the harness, stands, reaches for his shield.

Tony's AI taps him on the shoulder. He has the faceplate down again. Steve would hardly have known he wasn't the real Tony.

"Steve," Tony's AI says, and his voice is somehow kind and sharp at the same time. Steve imagines Tony recording himself for the AI, sitting in a studio reciting nonsense syllables so they could all be stitched together into this. "Steve, there's something you should know before you go in."

"What's that?"

The pause feels weighty. Steve imagines Tony making a face under the armor, trying to work out how to tell him whatever he thinks it is that Steve doesn't want to know.

The AI is probably not wasting processing power simulating a face that no one will see.

"They're an isolated base," he says, very quietly. "It looks like they've been on radio silence for about six months. They-- I don't think they know."

Steve frowns. "What don't you think they know?" he asks, and the AI makes a short staticky noise, a simulated indrawn breath, and Steve understands everything, all at once, and it's all terrible.

The air all goes out from him at once and he's leaning on a bulkhead to hold himself up.

"Yeah," Tony's AI says grimly. "That."

Steve doesn't want to be here, but he draws himself up anyway. "Okay," he says. He is very much not okay. "Let's do this."

* * *

The first man they see inside the base raises his arms in a salute and Steve's heart stutters in his chest.

"Hail, Supreme Leader!" the Hydra agent yells, with absolute, fervent loyalty.

Steve wants to be sick.

He'd thought the world was getting better. He'd thought the scars were healing. He'd thought that Tony's PSA campaign had done something. He'd thought that his trip across America had done something. He'd thought that children had stopped cowering in fear. He'd just about started being able to look himself in the mirror every morning and think _this is your face, yours_ and believe it.

But he'd been wrong. None of that mattered. None of that mattered, because he's standing here in a Hydra base and they all think he's a monster. They think the man with this face is their monster and they love him for it.

Steve's hands are frozen on the rim of his shield, and God, that's even worse. He's paralyzed. They'll think he's one of them for sure--

He can't make himself move.

A bright light lashes out from behind him and hits the Hydra agent right in the chest. He topples over, unconscious.

"I've got you, Cap," says a familiar, crackling static voice, and it's not Tony, it's not, but it's close enough. Tony's AI steps up next to him, lifts his head in one of Tony's gestures of encouragement. "I've got you. You don't have to do this alone."

Steve pretends the AI is smiling when he says it. He sounds just like Tony.

* * *

Not only does Steve not have to do it alone, Steve ends up doing practically none of it himself. He just follows Tony's AI and lets him clear the base, taking out room after room of green-and-yellow Hydra agents.

The last agent in the control room turns around to face them, and Steve finally, finally springs into action, lashing out with his shield. The man crumples, unconscious.

At least he got one of them. He doesn't feel much better, though.

They're standing alone in the control room.

Steve slings his shield on his back and half-wishes he could join the unconscious agent on the floor.

His hands are tingling. 

"We are the only two conscious life signs for twenty miles," the AI declares triumphantly, and the his eyeslits flicker; it's sort of like squinting, probably. "I mean, uh, technically there's only one because it's just you. But still, I think we did good. I think we-- Steve? Steve? Are you okay?"

The world feels unreal around him, and he just can't stop shaking. It's not unusual for him to feel a little out of sorts after a battle, but this time feels different. He's sweating, cold and clammy.

This is his fault. There's no way to pretend Hydra never happened. He can't stop lying to himself. If the monsters think he's one of them, what does it make him?

"Tony," he says, brokenly, and Tony's AI flips the faceplate back, his face agonized blazing light.

Steve holds his arms out, desperately.

The AI reaches back. He pulls him close. The edge of the helmet clips Steve's shoulder, and then half his face slides through Steve's shoulder, the illusion broken. He's insubstantial. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. The man behind the curtain is half a world away.

Armor scrapes across mail, ice-cold, and it's not enough, and Steve hates himself for thinking it, but it's not. Tony's AI is alive too, is Tony too, is Tony just as much as Tony is, and it's not his fault that he can't be what Steve needs right now.

"I'm taking you home," the AI whispers, and because he's Tony, of course he knows what the problem is. "I've already called him."

* * *

Steve expected that the AI would just drop him off and go back to wherever it is he goes when he isn't here, but he should have realized that Tony's AI has a heart as big as Tony does.

They're sitting on opposite ends of the couch, trading off control of the Netflix queue -- Tony's AI picked _Blade Runner_ , which is, Steve assumes, some kind of robot joke Steve doesn't quite get, because he's never seen it -- and Steve has a blanket pulled up to his chin and is trying very hard not to think about anything at all.

This is when Tony comes running in -- literally running, like he thinks something is on fire and it might be Steve.

"I heard," Tony pants out, and he doesn't finish the sentences before collapsing onto the couch, tipping over, pulling Steve into his arms.

Tony is warm and soft and alive, and this, this is exactly what Steve needed, Tony right here. He can feel the weight on his shoulders begin to lift away.

"I missed you," he breathes, and Tony just hugs him harder.

"I'm here," Tony murmurs, and then he raises his voice. "Hey, Mini-Me, you can go, okay?"

The armor creaks. "I'm taller than you," the AI points out, as he starts to lever himself up.

"You're a hologram projected into a suit of armor," Tony says, grinning. "Your height has no definition."

"Well, I choose to be taller than you," the AI says, with that note in his voice that Tony gets when he thinks he's so clever. He's on his feet now.

Suddenly it doesn't seem fair to kick him out. He couldn't hug Steve, no -- but that doesn't mean he doesn't have feelings. And it doesn't mean he shouldn't stay and watch the movie.

"Hey," Steve says, and they're both looking at him. "You don't have to go if you don't want to."

"Steve?" Tony and his AI ask at the same time, identically astonished.

"You picked the movie," Steve says. "You might as well get to watch it."

"If you're sure," the AI says, hesitantly, and Steve knows that voice from Tony too.

Steve smiles and nods, and the AI sits back down on the other side of Tony.

Tony starts laughing as the credits come up and he recognizes the movie. "Oh, my God," he says, and he tips his head against Steve. "You know he's trolling you, right?" He glances over at his AI. "Didn't we have that talk about not trolling Captain America?"

Steve really wishes he'd been a fly on the wall for that conversation.

The AI laughs static. "I'm you," he says. "You'd have done it."

Tony considers this. "Okay, fair."

Steve leans back into Tony and smiles, amused, content to let their banter wash over him. "Next week," he says, "we're watching _Metropolis_."

That gets them both laughing, quieting down as the movie starts.

Tony turns his head just enough to whisper into Steve's ear. "Hey," he asks. "How are you? Everything okay? Doing any better?"

Right now he knows who he is. And he knows he has Tony here, Tony who loves him.

"Yeah," Steve says. "Yeah, I'm doing just fine."

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr post](http://sineala.tumblr.com/post/181786635804/fic-good-to-have-you-back), if you're still on Tumblr.


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